Sterling schools revamp student proficiency targets

Sept. 29 – STERLING – The Sterling Public Schools Board announced the district’s goal of increasing student proficiency scores by nearly 20% over the next three years.

Sterling Public Schools Superintendent Tad Everett said SPS has changed its approach to student achievement and goal setting since Lincoln Elementary School and Challand Middle School received “targeted” Every Student Succeeds Act designations in 2017.

“This was a huge blow for us as an organization, but more importantly for me as a leader,” Everett said in an interview with Shaw Local. “Realizing that we had two schools that were underperforming academically really started our transformation.”

Before 2017, SPS measured student success using Advanced Placement and localized assessments, including how many students were enrolled in dual-credit courses and the student graduation rate, which Everett said was still 90%. But ESSA makes those appointments based in part on standardized testing, which Everett called “a pretty controversial issue.”

“There are some people in education who are firm believers in standardized testing and the value of that,” Everett said. “Then there are those who say it has no value. They say it’s a measuring stick based on a test taken in high school that means nothing in terms of the value of your life and what you’re going to achieve.”

ESSA, a bipartisan measure that President Barack Obama signed into law in December 2015, is a reauthorization of the 50-year-old Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the nation’s national education law. ESSA tasks states with creating a plan to ensure every child learns and is on the path to college and careers.

ESSA replaced the No Child Left Behind Act, sponsored by former President George W. Bush in 2002, and uses four summative definitions to determine how a school’s students are performing: exemplary, meritorious, goal-directed, and comprehensive and intensive. According to the Illinois Report Card:

* Exemplary schools rank in the top 10% statewide and have no underperforming student groups.

* Commended schools have no underperforming student body, a graduation rate above 67%, and statewide performance below the top 10%.

* Targeted schools have one or more groups of students performing at or below the level of the overall “all students” group in the bottom 5% of schools.

* Comprehensive schools rank in the bottom 5% of schools in Illinois, along with high schools with a graduation rate of 67% or lower.

“We were using different assessments that, rightly or wrongly, showed that our students were doing well academically,” Everett said. “Then all of a sudden the ESSA data comes out and says you’re not doing as well as you thought you were compared to other schools.”

Since then, Everett said SPS has continued to use its localized assessments but has also begun to place more emphasis on the impact of standardized testing on the ESSA definition.

“If the state and federal governments are going to use standardized testing, we can’t ignore that,” Everett said. “So we’re placing greater emphasis and value on standardized testing as we focus on our students’ college and career readiness. We want to say that the students who attend our schools are above the state average. That’s our goal.”

Since the designation in 2017, all SPS schools have received “commendable” designations, Everett said.

“When you look at student achievement, you’re really looking at three things,” Everett said. “What you teach, how you teach it, and how you determine whether they’re learning it. We align all three of those to state standards, and it’s really paying off.”

Now SPS is continuing its upward trend by revamping the way it determines and evaluates the success of its goals, moving from annual to triennial measurement.

“Instead of having all these targets where you go an inch deep, a mile wide, we do the opposite,” Everett said. “We’re digging deep and narrowing that focus. Instead of trying something and looking at it every year, we give it time and measure that success every three years.”

SPS’s goals call for improving student proficiency rates in a variety of subjects by 2027. SPS plans to increase the percentage of students scoring proficient or excellent on state English/language arts assessments from 26.3% to 45% in 2023 and from 21.2% to 40% on math assessments. %. It also aims to increase the math readiness percentage of kindergarten students from 9% to 25%.